Can Nutrition Help Ease Endometriosis Symptoms?

Traditional Western medicine—they're not known for digging. They don't have time to dig. They're bound by insurance, and so you know what can they do in a 15 to 30 minute appointment? It's here's some Tylenol or ibuprofen for the pain, birth control. Let's regulate those estrogen levels, and then of course surgery is kind of the last resort. But they're not—they don't have the time, and I don't say this to put down Western medicine because there is absolutely a time and a place. But they don't have the time or the resources to sit and chat with someone about what does your diet look like? You know, what is your xenoestrogen exposure? How many toxins are you exposed to on a daily basis? You know, all of that stuff. They just— they don't have the time. And then insurance isn't going to cover things like comprehensive stool testing to really look at the microbiome, things like that.

Hello and welcome to Beyond Diagnosis, a podcast to raise your awareness, decisions, and voice for alternative practices so you can take back control of your health. I'm Rita De Michele, your host, a mindset and empowerment coach, and the founder of the Onus platform. Join me each week so you can create the health Are you living with endometriosis or have undiagnosed pelvic pain and it's diminishing your quality of life? Then today's guest, Kira Witham, a highly regarded functional nutritionist, traditional naturopathic doctor, and a hypnotherapist, has a unique approach and perspective within women's health. Welcome, Kira.

Thank you, Rita. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today.

Oh, you're welcome. It's great to have you here. And in endometriosis, I might end up calling that endo in the show because that's a mouthful. It really does. I have a— I know personally a very good friend of mine has it. It affects millions of women across the world. Um, little known is known about the causes. Can take between 8 and 10 years to get a diagnosis, and they say there's no cure except for maybe surgery. You know, really, when a woman who's suffering and hears that, it sounds so frightening. And I'm sure that you'll be shining a very different light on what I've just said. Can you tell us a little bit about what endometriosis is And how might some of the symptoms present?

Yeah, so I'm gonna call it endo too. Endo is basically tissue, endometrial tissue that's growing where it shouldn't be, outside of the uterus. Sometimes it's fallopian tubes, sometimes it's abdominal organs, sometimes it's bladder. It really depends. And with that comes a whole host of symptoms, and this is why It can be so tricky to diagnose because a lot of times it's actually mistaken for IBS because typical symptoms beyond, of course, pelvic pain are going to be nausea, diarrhea, or constipation, abdominal pain in general, bloating, distension, that type of thing. And so a lot of times people will go to their primary care and say, these are all my symptoms, and they'll just slap a diagnosis of IBS on it. Because it's not a simple thing to diagnose. There's not a blood test. There's not a simple test out there. It's got to come essentially from some surgery to see what's actually growing where. And so a lot of women never even get the proper diagnosis, or they go years, like you said, in pain before they get a diagnosis. And then the treatment is either here's a bunch of ibuprofen when the symptoms come on, we can put you on birth control, or we've got excision surgery. And that's about it.

Wow, that sounds really limiting, especially, especially if you're someone who doesn't want to be on birth control.

Yeah, and it's disempowering. That's my thing, is like, really, those are my 3 options? Okay, so you're, you're basically telling me that I'm broken.

Exactly. And that is not a great place to be because then all those feelings of, well, what can I do? You know, you start feeling hopeless around your condition. So is there not X-ray or CT scan or anything like that that can actually see this?

No, it's not like— there's not. And that's the hard part. And even, even with excision surgery, let's say, um, they decide to go in and start hunting for it, you can have extrapelvic Endometriosis where it's, it's not even growing where they think it's growing. It can be missed. A lot of times if you search the endo community, you'll find women that have had surgery and then symptoms come back a year later, maybe 2, 3, 5 if they're really lucky. They go through another surgery because a lot of times they can't find it all. And because the root of the problem is never even figured out, a lot of times it's just going to grow back. So no, there's not a great test. There's not a great diagnosis. It's, it's not a fun one.

It's certainly not. And touching back on what you said about the root cause of it, is the root cause of it completely different for everyone, or does it have a general kind of root cause?

I would say general, and I think we can slap a general root cause with every disease dynamic, but everyone's is going to be slightly different, right? Like, there is usually an immune component, like the immune system has gone a little bit haywire. What's driving that might be different for everyone. Most people associate endometriosis with just estrogen dominance, but then what's driving the estrogen dominance? And that's different for everyone. There can be an imbalance of gut flora. We can talk about something called the estrobolone, which is basically How well your gut is modulating estrogen levels, but what's driving that dysbiosis? So I'm going to say there's some generic things that are you know in place for everyone, but it's going to be different in terms of what's driving that dynamic.

It sounds like my goodness, you'd have to be so investigative to get to the bottom of this, and you really really need someone who knows what they're doing because you've just described a couple of layers there that. If you're not really sure, you'll dismiss all that. So what role does the does the gut play in endo?

So I mean we have we have something called an estrobolome, and I'm not even going to get into the clinical aspect of that because I don't want to bore people. But we've got certain gut bacteria that modulate levels of estrogen estrogen in the system. But we've also got other aspects of you know intestinal permeability or leaky gut. we want to call it that, or dysbiosis, which is just a fancy, fancy term for an imbalance of gut flora. But that on its own, it can be responsible for the onset and the progression of endometriosis, um, because then it's also impacting the immune system. And we don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but a lot of times it's the gut that's dysregulating the immune system.

Wow. And you know how many people actually have dysbiosis?

A lot.

A lot. It is amazing how many people do for various reasons, whether it's, you know, their diet, whether it's stress, whether it's, you know, um, it can be even in your family, like genetically, that you're predisposed to gut imbalances, can it? Or is that not really proven?

Yeah, so I'm going to say not necessarily genetic. I mean, there might be a component. But really, when we're looking at the microbiome, I always tell my clients, congratulations, you got your mom's. Because think about where you're hanging out for 9 months. Usually, it's coming from mom. There's a little bit that comes from dad, but we're pretty much getting mom's gut. So people say genetics, but I'm like, no, it's just— We're passing that down. And that, I mean, that's a conversation for another day, but that's why it's so important to prep the body before you even get pregnant.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what, there is so much more knowledge around that now, you know, than there was, you know, when I had my son. And, you know, so, you know, people really need to jump onto the gut before they get pregnant. But getting back to endo, what is the standard Why is it that the standard of care isn't necessarily helpful?

Um, I mean, honestly, it's because I don't think they know what else to do. I mean, if we look at—

Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to managing endo, what do you look at? Is it like liver, immune? We saw, you know, you spoke about immune. Is there liver? You know, we You spoke about the gut. What else? What else do you look at to manage it?

Yeah, so first thing I'm looking at is the estrogen piece and are we being exposed to xenoestrogens, or basically outside estrogens, right? So not even looking at a hormone panel, but let's talk about things like BPA and phthalates and the foods that you're eating, conventional dairy. You know, are we being exposed to excess estrogens that we can kind of bring those levels down? I'm definitely looking at gut health in general. Is there dysbiosis? Is there leaky gut? What are the things that you're doing on a daily basis that are going to impact gut? And that's when I talk to clients about, do you take a probiotic? Not that I'm— I'm not always for one, but it can be helpful to know if someone's taken the same probiotic for the last 8 years. Liver definitely plays a role there because that's part of what's packaging up that estrogen for excretion. Um, and sometimes people's bodies aren't doing that and that's building up in the body. Um, so definitely talking about liver health. Um, and then I talk a lot about the nervous system, uh, because if you're running around in fight, flight, or even freeze, that's gonna impact the gut, the vagus nerve, immune system, and it's rippling into everything else as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna talk to you about stress, but you sort of covered it just there. And the interesting, the interesting Interesting thing about it is so many people just talk about, um, fight and flight, but you just mentioned freeze. And this has come up in another podcast episode for me where someone mentioned freeze, and that seems to be another layer that people are putting on the stress. Just touch on what do you mean by the freeze?

Basically, you get to the point of shutting down, you know. So I'm probably not explaining it well, but you know, it's polyvagal theory. We can be in fight, flight, or freeze. Freeze, I don't think, is talked about as, as much, but it really is the body just shutting down, you shutting down. I don't want to liken it to depression, but almost to the extent of you're just numb. Nothing lights you up anymore. Nothing brings you down. You're just numb.

Right. And that can definitely have an impact, having that kind of numb, shut down, closed-in sort of, um, emotional state.

Yeah. You feel that you can't respond to your environment appropriately. Yeah.

Right. So isn't that a breeding ground for, for, um, excuse me, for something to grow?

Yeah.

You know, when we look at on that level That's really interesting. So lifestyle definitely plays a big part in this. So does it play a big part in, uh, developing it, or does it play a bigger part in managing it? Or do you feel you can actually reverse it?

Can you help you?

Like they say, there's no cure. Do you believe that?

Yes and no. So I'll answer the first part. I think it's 50/50. I think the lifestyle, trauma, all of the things go into the development of endometriosis. But I also think the same things go into helping the body heal, because I do think our body has an innate ability to heal. Now, whether there's a cure It's the same thing as autoimmune. There's no cure for an autoimmune diagnosis, but we can put it into remission. And for me, it's the same thing with endometriosis. We can get to a point where someone's not experiencing those symptoms anymore, where, you know, they're not debilitated around ovulation or their cycle, or they're able to get pregnant because that's a common one.

Yeah, absolutely. And does what we eat Have an impact.

100%, especially if we're going into that toxic burden and estrogen. We need phytoestrogens going in to help push out some of that excess estrogen. We need liver-supportive foods like beets and bitter greens and cruciferous vegetables and grapefruits and all those fun things that no one likes to eat to help with bile flow. Um, what we eat is going to impact inflammation, the microbiome, right? If we're just eating the same 5 foods over and over, there's no diversity. We're not feeding beneficial bacteria, and of course going to impact the immune system. Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on and on, but food plays a massive role in this.

So basically, don't eat anything processed; eat all fresh and natural, and that's going to help. So, Kira, how is your work different to the traditional? Like if someone's coming to you. They either suspect they have endo because they can't get to— they've done so much and they can't get to the bottom of their pelvic pain, or like you were saying before, stomach distension, or someone has finally got a diagnosis of endo. How do you start with them? What do you do? What's different that you offer?

Um, I mean, first off, I offer a, a very comprehensive first appointment that's about 2 hours, which is much different than what other people do because I need to understand the person and their story. I need to know what are the foods that you're putting in your body on a daily basis, and can we make some tweaks there? I need to know what the toxins are in your environment. I want to know things that you've potentially been exposed to. I want to know your trauma history. And that's a big way that I'm different, is a lot of practitioners will run tests, give supplements, make diet and lifestyle changes, which are all great, don't get me wrong. That's all I did for years and years and years. But now I've come to understand that trauma, emotions, mindset, all of that plays a massive role. And when we're looking at things like gut dysfunction, immune dysregulation, what's driving that? You know, sometimes it's food, sometimes it's lifestyle, but what else? You know, a lot of times people will say, oh, I looked at my stool test. I have a leaky gut. I, you know, I'm, I was told to take these supplements. I'm like, but what led to the leaky gut then?

Yeah.

Was that something traumatic that happened? Was it, you know, unresolved emotions? I don't know. So I'm definitely taking a trauma timeline, and we spend a good amount of time talking through emotions and mindset and perfectionism and boundaries and all these things that people don't necessarily associate with health.

Yes. And you know what, sometimes some people are a bit taken aback, you know, because they come in and they think, I've gone to a doctor I haven't received any answers. I don't want to take or do what they have suggested as my only options. So they hear about functional doctors or complementary alternative doctor, and they think, okay, here's my answer. I'm going for an appointment. She's going to give me supplements that are natural. I'm going to take that and all is going to be good. But it's not. We have to really, whether it's supplements or pharmaceuticals. We gotta get away from this pill popping is my answer. Just take, take something and off I go. We have to get down to, like you say, the root cause. And usually in functional medicine they go, what's your root cause? But you have to go even further because it's usually the emotions. And when I was actually doing a whole lot of research around this, um, I came across this recent Italian study that stated that women's Psychological well-being can impact pain associated with endo. You know, their internal— they were describing how a woman's internal need for control, her negative emotions, depression, self-blame can lead to increased acute pain and a sense of helplessness and anxiety. You know, all can have a huge impact. So when you've got endo, maybe you're not thinking, wow, what's my emotional state around all this? Or how have I been in the last 5 years prior to this appearing, suddenly coming?

Mm-hmm.

You know, I know that you really do believe, and that's, you know, what you've just mentioned, that you really believe in the mind-body. And that's why you became also a hypnotherapist. So let's, let's talk a little bit about that, because I think that is a really important aspect for our listeners and viewers to really understand, that their emotions, their stress levels of not last week, of 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, have had a huge impact to where they are now.

Yeah.

So let's now talk about how you help them with their mindset.

And then, I mean, I think the first, like, truly the first piece is awareness, because a lot of times my clients come into me thinking, well, you know, we all have stress, it's not that big of a deal. Yes, we all have stress, but let's talk about how that presents, because 5 of us can be lined up doing the exact same things, whereas one person feels insanely stressed and they're, you know, running around like a chicken with their head cut off. Another person is dealing with the exact same stressor, but they've got tools in place and they're calm and it's not a big deal. The body doesn't know the difference between real and imagined. And I think that is powerful to remember, that if you're creating all these stories in your head, if you have not let go of especially emotions that are not serving us, like anger, resentment, grief, that's leading to symptoms in the body. So I think we've got to start with the awareness of what even has gone on in my life, like you said, the last 10 years, or even just the short period leading up before all these symptoms erupted out of nowhere. Was it stress? What are the tools in your toolbox? Because most of us are not great at this, and I will own it myself. It has been— The biggest part of my healing journey over the past few years has Learning how to slow down in a society where we just value go, go, go, you know, hustle grind culture, especially as an entrepreneur. So getting those tools in your toolbox, understanding what stress looks like and how it physically presents in the body, looking at the emotions, looking at your boundaries, and really just diving into all of those aspects. And this is not an overnight thing. It's not a handout thing. It's something that people have to work on. Honestly, for years. And I'm not saying that it's going to take years to feel better from endometriosis or these symptoms, but it's going to take years to kind of peel away layers of the onion that have just been ignored for so long.

Absolutely. And even though some people do, do a lot of mindset work or a lot of emotional healing, and you obviously help them through that with hypnotherapy, Yet some people still do not heal or get relief from, you know, what they're experiencing. Do you believe that we tend— we need to go even deeper? Like, we really need to tap into the heart space? Is that what's— is that something you help them with?

I mean, that's not my specialty, but I think I know what you're saying, and I do think it's important because We can't look at healing as just this one simple thing. It's multidimensional, really, you know? And, and it's even looking at beliefs, which is where hypnotherapy comes in. And I think what you're getting at with the heart space of like, do you even believe that you can heal at the soul level? You know?

Yeah.

Do you think that you can heal? Do you think you're worthy of healing? A lot of times that brings an emotional response from my clients. And the answer is no, I don't think I'm worthy of healing. Or I don't think I can heal because I've been dealing with this for so long. That's where we need to go. But I could be wrong with what you mean by the heart space.

That's exactly what I mean. That's exactly what I mean. It's going even deeper than, you know, are you negative around this? Or, you know, you, um, yes, you've had a trauma that now has got you believing that you can't trust or something like that. I'm thinking if that is not helping you and you're not getting relief, there is something so much deeper than what our rational— what our minds or even our subconscious mind, you know, is something very deep. And that's that usually the self-esteem, the self-worth, a little bit what that study was saying, that if you do not believe at a very heart core level that you can heal, well, you won't. Maybe, you know, that's— and that's where that— why, why am I doing what they're doing and yet they're off feeling so much better and I'm still on the start line?

Yeah, yeah, you hit the nail on the head. And honestly, I have my clients start with self-love. It's the very first thing we do. I have a pre-recorded self-love hypnosis audio. And sometimes we need to go deeper and do, you know, private hypnosis. But that's one that all of my clients get because I think it's a foundational piece. You can't heal until you love yourself unconditionally. And there's a lot of women in the world that hate themselves, hate their bodies. We can't heal in that environment.

Hate your bodies is a big one, isn't it? Like, do you feel that maybe even just that very core belief of I hate my body Then it can grow endo? Endo can be the result of that?

I think that. Now, do I have anything, any research to back that up? No. But we know that those thoughts and emotions and beliefs store themselves in tissues. I mean, the classic book The Body Keeps the Score, it's the same type of thing. It doesn't have to be a physical trauma. No one had to do anything to you, but you're creating more trauma in the body of constantly looking in the mirror or not even being able to look in the mirror and saying, I hate myself, I hate this pudge over here and this over there. Absolutely, you're just beating yourself up.

Um, yeah, it's having that respect for yourself and your body, isn't it? And that— and like you said, that self-love. Well, that's a really big piece. So if we can go back and we kind of distill the information here for someone who's like listening to this but they're in so much pain. Yeah. What are, what are the steps and the recommendations? Can you just go over again what is available for them and what can they do? Because, you know, when you're in a lot of pain, it's easy to go, yeah, right, yeah, right, easy to say love yourself. I'm like buckled over on the sofa. It's not making sense for me, you know.

Yep.

Can you leave our listeners and the viewers with A little bit of a snapshot of a bit of a timeline of what you were saying, and then what's something that they can do at home to help themselves?

Yeah, I'm going to give a few things that I think that people can start implementing, and you might already be doing a couple of these, you might not. So start with the diet piece. You know, you don't have to eat the perfect diet. Um, just do your best to eat a whole foods-based diet. That's gonna get you a long way. So if someone looks at their diet and says, oof, I'm eating, you know, macaroni and cheese every day, and I have broccoli, but that's my only vegetable, then I'm gonna encourage more whole foods and branching out with those fruits and vegetables, especially trying to eat the rainbow, because that's gonna ripple into gut health and help diversify beneficial bacteria along the lines of gut health. Definitely eating things like fermented foods, sauerkraut, kimchi, anything we can do, any liver supportive foods. So if you're someone that likes bitter greens like dandelion, mustard greens, cruciferous vegetable, broccoli, cauliflower, that's great. Do that. Look at your toxic burden. So look at the things that you're putting on your body around the house, right? If there's fragrances, if there's phthalates. Those are the big things I'm looking for. Toss them, you know, get, get something that's more natural because our toxic burden in this day and age is already insane. I think I read that the average woman is exposed to like 180 chemicals before she even walks out the door in the morning. It was an insane number.

It's insane.

So it's nuts. And that's the thing. Our liver can only keep up so much. We weren't exposed to those things 100 years ago. So Look at the things around your house, what you're cooking with, cleaning with, slathering on your body. And then I'm going to say that next big piece is the stress and mindset. Even if you're not in a place to say, I love myself, that is okay. But look at your levels of stress. Look at the time that you take for yourself to rest and recover. And if that's not happening, that needs to be like a top priority, whether that's Prayer, meditation, journaling, breathing exercises, getting out in nature. I tell my clients, I don't care what you do as long as it calms the body and the mind, because that's what we're after.

That's great advice. That's because this isn't a quick fix. Endo is not a quick fix thing. It is a long-term, but it is, like you say, manageable. And it is also, um, able to be put into remission. So there is a lot of hope for people who kind of feel like they just have to live with it. You know, you don't. You know, there's so much that you can do to help them. What's your best piece of advice or action that someone can do today to help them if they are really struggling?

Hmm, that's a tough one.

The last one's a beauty.

I know, because there's so many different things. Um, I hate to say this because I just gave a bunch of tips, but I'm gonna say don't settle for it, you know, because a lot of times women get to the place where it's like, all right, I'm just gonna roll over. Like, this is what I'm gonna deal with for the rest of my life. I'm just gonna take, you know, Tylenol, ibuprofen, and just Power through it and hope that someday I go through menopause and it's better. Don't do that. Keep digging, keep getting, you know, asking for answers. Even if you can't afford a more holistic provider, keep bugging your doctor.

Yeah.

And, and keep digging into those other aspects that I mentioned. It's not gonna, you know, have you feeling amazing in a month, but if you keep working on the diet, the stress, the mindset, and all those things, you will see improvement.

That's great advice, and I love that because it actually gives people hope. Without hope, how do you keep moving forward? How do you keep, you know, um, advocating for yourself and thinking that you're worth, you know, the best health? That you're worth— everyone's worth vibrant health, and that's what we're trying to get people back to. Kira, it has been so great having you on the show and sharing your knowledge. And if you want to contact Kira, all of her details will be in the show notes. Please reach out to her. As you can hear, she has a great plan, and she does delve into the most important part, which is our emotions. It's been such a pleasure having you.

Thank you so much. This was great.

You're welcome. I would love to know What was the biggest insight or aha moment you got from this interview so you can now speak up, take action, and make informed decisions for your health? And if you like this episode, get instant access to your free ebook, Alternative Wisdom: Taking Back Control of Your Health, at life-onus.com.